This class explores the methods and frameworks for encountering queer and trans pasts in critical conversation with historical scholarship, sources, and methods. This course is designed for graduate students seeking to gain a better understanding of the interdisciplinary landscape of queer and trans historical scholarship. This includes interdisciplinary scholars who would like to gain experience with archival work and related disciplinary questions in history, and it also includes historians who would like to familiarize themselves with questions arising from queer and trans studies. We will encounter authors such as C. Riley Snorton, Zeb Tortorici, Margot Canaday, Regina Kunzel, Greta LaFleur, and Saidiya Hartman as well as primary sources in local and digital archives.
The class will prepare students to:
Understand major debates amongst trans and queer studies scholars regarding approaches to studying queer and trans pasts
Understand key historical methods and the differences between these and interdisciplinary historicist methods
Practice methods of investigating trans and queer pasts by engaging historical sources
Learn how to put their own work into historical context
Practice pursuing historical research (archival and historiographical) in interdisciplinary frameworks
Apply to research fellowships related to their own projects
Course Requirements:
Course work will include regular reading responses, engaged participation in discussion, and hands-on work with University archives and libraries. For the final assignment, students will prepare an application to a short-term research fellowship.